Composition 1920

This is a painting by Janos Mattis-Teutsch, called Composition, and it is hard to date. Looking at the surface of this picture you can see that the paint application is really physical; you can almost feel the artist pushing and pulling the paint across the canvas, trying to get it just so. The painting is made up of looping colours, which are bold and bright; yellows, pinks, blues and greens. See how Mattis-Teutsch uses black to anchor the forms? The eye jumps around the canvas, not really sure where to land. I like that. The painting reminds me of Kandinsky, another artist interested in the spiritual in art, and the relationship between colour and form, but Mattis-Teutsch feels more raw and expressive. It feels less important that we understand what the picture is *of*, and more that we experience it, intuitively.